Im having trouble getting playlists onto my vibez
Someone mentioned earlier in this post that it supports M3U, but when i try to copy M3U playlists to it, it tells me that filetype is not supported
it created a folder on the drive, by itself, in media called "My Playlists" but the playlist i make on the player arent in that folder for some reason
anyone have any idea how to get playlists on there?

thanks,
-jordan

rubennyc

09-11-2007 07:15 PM

I'm not sure m3u is supported in MTP mode. My first recommendation is to force it to connect in MSC mode.

How can I force the Vibez to connect to my WinXP pc in MSC mode instead of MTP?
1. Open Windows' Device Manager
2. Find the vibez in the list of devices
3. Right-click and select "Update Driver..."
4. Choose "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)", then click Next
5. Choose "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.", then click Next
6. Make sure that "Show compatible hardware" is checked
7. There should be two "Models" available, "MTP Device" and "USB Mass Storage Device", choose whichever one you want to switch to, then click Next
8. Wait for Windows to do it's thing then click Finish

After that's done, the vibez will show up as an external hard drive, and you can put your m3u playlist files wherever you want. Just make sure you pay attention to relative paths. If the tracks in the playlist aren't in the same location relative to the m3u, nothing will play.

HTH.

rubennyc

10-13-2007 12:22 PM

Just curious, did this work for you?

smitchel1099

01-02-2008 10:41 PM

playlists, yes -- M3U playlists, maybe not

I ,too, want playlists for audiobooks on my vibez. M3U's were ignored. So how to tell what it wants? The vibes creates it own playlists right on the player, right? and you can edit them there too !

I created a playlist on the device of what music was currently playing by using the command on the vibez menu, and then hooked to a pc and looked at the playlist the vibez had created. It puts them in My Playlists, but you can put playlists in the directories of audiobooks that you upload to the vibez--you do not have to put them in the My Playlists directory, and it is simpler to erase them later (as a usb mass stor. device) because you just delete 1 directory, not the directory and them go find/delete the playlist from it's directory. Vibez scans all directories on power up for playlists anyway.

So look at the playlist. The filename extension is .wpl so search google for .wpl and it is a Windows Media Player Playlist. To be sure, check the syntax in the playlist, and sure enough, it follows the conventions of that language.

How do you make a playlist in that format? 3rd party software, or can be done in Windows Media Player I would think, but I am not running Windows. And I don't want to run some program that manages my music--I just want a playlist.

So I made a Bash script for use at a command line in Linux, Unix, or I think also under Windows (with cygwin) that mimics the playlist that the vibez creates.
The script is called mkplaylist.sh and just needs to be on your path somewhere (with permissions set so all users can read/write/execute it and owner:group set to a non-root user/group, in my case steve:users). I put it in /bin though others may put it other places. To use it, just change to the directory that you have an audiobook in (or music), and type:
bash mkplaylist.sh > whatever-playlist-name.wpl
The bash might not be necessary if you are already running bash, but will always work if you include it.
The script creates a playlist file in the current directory using whatever name you gave it. It includes all the header info identical to the playlist the vibes created, and has all .mp3 files in the current directory listed in the playlist.
Here is the bash script:
---- start -------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
if [ $1x == '--helpx' ] || [ $1x == '-hx' ]
then
echo "Usage: mkplaylist.sh [playlist-name] > output-playlist-name.wpl "
echo " "
echo "if [playlist-name] not given, current directory name used"
echo "makes a playlist of all *.mp3 files in current directory"
echo " "
echo "written for Trekstor Vibez 1/1/2008 SKM & BRM"
exit
fi

The way we get the filenames is on purpose, so that this script handles filenames that have spaces in them as well as ones that don't.

There may be better ways to do this--I'm willing to learn,
if you know better ways, share them, but this accomplishes making playlists for the vibez, either on your hard drive, or if your vibes is hooked to the computer as a usb mass storage device, this script will make them in the directories you put on vibes that contain your music files.

Just for additional info, to mount the vibes in Linux, you have to add a line to your /etc/fstab file telling it how to mount it. In my fstab I put the following line:

The above is one line--though shows as two in this editor.
You will have to substitute the udev unique name given above (the usb-Trekstor_vibez part) for the one for your player. You do that by getting a directory of the place where it shows up. Type:
ls /dev/disk/by-id/
and then looking for your device. Be sure to let the connection settle 5-10 seconds to let it show up before
getting the directory.

Once you have that line in your fstab, (be sure to create the mount folder, too:
as root type:
mkdir /media/vibez)
Then you can mount it by simply typing:
mount /media/vibes
and when done (before you unplug it),
umount /media/vibes

If you do this a lot of times, you can make icons on your desktop or taskbar to do these commands by just clicking,
though you might miss error messages that way.

I can't tell what operating system people in this thread are using, so I hope my linux directions don't bore people that don't need them.

If you know anything about batch file programming, you should be able to rewrite the script file as a DOS batch file and have it work that way too. If you get stuck, I can help.

Please respond to the forum so we can hear how it goes for you!

smitchel1099

01-02-2008 10:46 PM

Oops! I spelled vibez wrong in two places, so substitute vibez for vibes please when mounting and unmounting!

rubennyc

01-02-2008 10:54 PM

Nice work! However, the vibez does indeed support .m3u playlist files. Just make sure the entries in the playlist file use relative paths and that they accurately reflect the location of each track relative to the location of the .m3u file itself.

I don't do this frequently, but it has never failed to work for me in MSC mode.

Here's some more info that may prove helpful. This is based on information provided by one of the developers that worked on the firmware:

Quote:

What playlist format does the Vibez use?If you use your Vibez using MTP -- in other words, if you use Windows Media Player 10 or 11, or Windows Vista, and haven't otherwise disabled MTP -- Playlists are dealt with in an MTP-specific way, and format support depends only on what your transfer software supports.

If you use your Vibez using mass-storage class -- in other words, if it appears as a drive-letter -- then the format support is indeed down to what the Vibez firmware supports directly.

Fortunately, the Vibez firmware directly supports all four main playlist formats: M3U, PLS, ASX, and WPL. Of these, M3U and PLS have the widest compatibility, but they're ANSI (8-bit) formats, which means they can't represent non-ASCII filenames in a way that's readable independent of locale. (Or, in other words, if your Greek friend writes some files with Greek filenames, and an M3U playlist referring to them, to your Vibez, then the playlist won't play. Nor will your French M3Us be readable by his Greek Vibez.)

ASX attempts to solve the locale problem, by being UTF-8 and XML-like; trouble is, it's not quite XML-like enough, as it doesn't escape XML special characters, and goes horribly wrong if you use "<" or ">" in filenames.

WPL is Microsoft's next attempt to solve that problem, and is genuine UTF-8 XML. Vibez uses WPL internally, for playlists sent over MTP. However, WPL support is not as widespread in other applications as either M3U or ASX.

But the term relative playlists is a mystery to me.
the vibes creates the .wpl with the files listed prefixed by
a ../ before the filename. If you have directories in your vibes--but no subdirectories--is that a relative path name?
Or what makes a pathname relative?

Here is the way that I have made m3u files for my audiobooks for other players:

first change to the directory where the audio book is.
then type:
ls *.mp3 > playlist.m3u

The ls command prints a directory of just filenames and the redirection command redirects the listing to the filename we give it. And that gives an ordered list of all .mp3 files in that directory into the filename you gave. Because you are doing this in the current directory, there are no paths at all.

There are more things you can put into m3u files, but this works for all the audiobooks and music I have tried.

So what is needed to make a "correct" m3u file for the vibez to see it? We have no examples because the vibes does not create m3u files. It just creates .wpl files as far
as I have seen.

So do you have one that will work? Can you upload a sample .m3u file that you have used and know to work?
Something with relative path files?

And if you can, can you also share a correct playlist in the other formats?

I like the command line and would like to write scripts to make all these types of playlists from the command line.
But I woould need examples of what does work.

Thanks!
Steve

rubennyc

01-04-2008 01:01 PM

Here you go. In this example, I copied the test.m3u to a folder called \My Music\ on the vibez. All paths below reside under the same \My Music\ folder:

Can't help you on the other playlist formats. Like I said, I don't do this often, so this is about the extent of my knowledge regarding playlists on the vibez. :D

Tuxi

01-13-2008 04:46 PM

FWIW, I copy my AmaroK playlists to another folder on my home directory and do a global replace of the difference in path names. I've used gedit for this in Linux. In Windows, you could do the same thing for a player that uses m3us (maybe with notepad).